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Angela Merkel, Teflon No Longer

German Chancellor Angela Merkel could be out of a job and her
country headed towards elections barely 100 days after the
formation of her new government, which took six months to form. It
would be a performance worthy of, well, Italy, and all
because the stolid, reliable Bavarian conservatives who spent years
acting as a doormat for her chancellorship turned into raging
populists. They now demand that Berlin bar entry of foreign
migrants from other European Union states. A majority of Germans
are in agreement.

That makes even less realistic French President Emmanuel
Macron’s proposed “reforms” that would shift even
more power to Brussels. Berlin had already largely demurred from
Macron’s plan, offering a basket of half-measures in
response. “Solidarity must never lead to a debt union,”
Merkel explained. Now Macron, who vanquished the National
Front’s Marine Le Pen in last year’s presidential race,
will have to adapt to a Europe that is moving sharply away from
him.

For instance, the United Kingdom continues to stagger towards
Brexit, under Theresa May’s desultory premiership. The EU
remains a populist foil in Greece, which, under the left-wing
Syriza government, is imposing another round of pension cuts to
satisfy EU creditors. Hungary’s populist Viktor Orbán, a
former liberal, was reelected two months ago with an overwhelming
parliamentary majority.

The Czech Republic’s Andrej Babis finally forged a
coalition with the Social Democrats. A billionaire businessman
sometimes compared to Donald Trump, Babis publicly curbed his
Euroskepticism, but he is obviously no friend to the EU. His
government will receive tacit backing from the small Communist
Party, which is favorable toward Russia (as is President Milos
Zeman). Poland’s Law and Justice Party, meanwhile, continues
to battle the EU, which scheduled a formal hearing on whether the
traditionalist/nationalist government is violating the rule of law.
Konrad Szymanski, Poland’s Minister for European Affairs, has
denounced this as a “massive power grab.”

Europe’s populist wave is
still building-and it could claim the German chancellor
next.

Austria’s young, telegenic Sebastian Kurz, a critic of the
established order, completed his transformation from liberal
minister to populist chancellor by allying with the more extreme
Freedom Party. Kurz spoke of creating “an axis of the
willing” to combat illegal immigration, looking to both Italy
and Germany (and evoking unfortunate historical memories). He
hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin last month. In July, the
Austrian government will take over the EU’s rotating
presidency. Kurz says his agenda will be “a Europe that
protects.”

Slovenia held elections in early June, and the Slovenian
Democratic Party, headed by another former liberal, took clear
first place. Known as the SDS, the party combines liberal economic
views with antagonism towards immigration. The SDS will struggle to
form a coalition, but worth noting is that the former ruling Modern
Centre Party collapsed, coming in only fourth. Hungary’s
Viktor Orbán offered his support at an SDS campaign rally.

What most threatens Eurocratic dominance in Brussels, however,
is not the rise of a Central and Eastern European right, but the
transformation of “Old Europe’s” governments. For
instance, Italy just inaugurated a populist left-right coalition
hostile to the continuing shift of authority to Brussels and open
to leaving the Euro. Indeed, the new administration is
“peppered with figures who” threaten “the EU
order,” according to David Charter of The Times of
London.

In Italy, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, head of the
right-leaning League, dramatically turned away a rescue ship with
629 North Africans last week, saying “The nice life is over
for illegal migrants.” Rome also indicated that it will try
to block an EU trade deal with Canada. The coalition opposes
sanctions on Russia and Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte has backed
President Trump’s call for Russia’s inclusion in the
G-7.

Germany’s politics is shifting in a similar direction. The
political center continues to shrink dramatically. Merkel’s
Christian Democratic Union and Horst Seehofer’s Christian
Social Union (the latter runs only in Bavaria and aligns with the
CDU) along with the Social Democratic Party hemorrhaged votes in
last fall’s election. The Alternative for Germany (AfD),
created in 2013 to oppose immigration and the European Union, made
its Bundestag debut last fall as the largest opposition party. The
historically liberal Free Democrats also campaigned against
Merkel’s migration policy and reentered parliament last
year.

The CSU blames Merkel for its decline. Most of the refugees, 1.6
million since 2015, entered through Bavaria, and the CSU faces a
difficult provincial election in October. Seehofer, both CSU leader
and interior minister, is desperate to prevent even more losses in
Bavaria to the AfD. In March he declared that “Islam does not
belong to Germany.” In the midst of the immigration dispute,
he skipped a meeting with Merkel to huddle with Austria’s
Chancellor Kurz.

If the CSU withdrew or was forced from her coalition, Merkel
might turn to another party. But the Free Democrats are no less
hostile to migration (and to Merkel herself), and including the
Greens would trigger a sharp leftward lurch in government. If
Merkel’s chancellorship collapsed, those hostile to the
three-member ruling party likely would continue to move to more
radical parties. To avoid a political apocalypse, Seehofer plans to
hold off imposing new border rules until Merkel can try to strike a
deal at the EU summit at the end of the month. But agreement will
not come easily. Said Bavaria’s CSU Minister-President Martin
Soeder Soeder: “Of course it would be good if there were
European solutions, but in three years a European solution
hasn’t been achieved.” Bilateral pacts would be equally
difficult politically. Yet neither Seehofer nor Merkel can afford
to retreat.

The populist right does not have a common program other than
opposing the status quo, yet that’s proving to be enough.
Italy’s coalition, made up of Salvini’s right-leaning
League and the leftish Five Stars movement, and headed by Luigi Di
Maio who serves as labor and industry minister, is badly divided.
However, the two parties dislike immigration, like Russia, and have
accepted each other’s most expansive fiscal demands.

Italy has a largely stagnant economy, a huge debt of nearly $2.7
trillion (132 percent of GDP), and expansive social benefits and
rigid economic controls. The populist government in place now will
exacerbate all these problems. The coalition’s official
promises, a moderate version of the two parties’ electoral
programs, could cost as much as $146 billion annually, or 6 percent
of GDP. Rome is almost certain to fall out of compliance with EU
fiscal rules. Economists Olivier Blanchard, Silvia Merler, and
Jeromin Zettelmeyer call the government’s agenda “a
recipe for a debt crisis.” Coalition members talk hopefully
but futilely about changing EU rules and getting money from Europe.
With the Eurozone’s third largest economy, Italy is too big
to fail or bail out, which could make leaving the Euro an economic
necessity.

However, criticism does not scare the coalition. When
Italy’s establishment president sought to block the new
government, Salvini said the resulting election “will be a
referendum between Italy and those on the outside who want us to be
a servile, enslaved nation on our knees.” Many Italians
believe that in 2011 the French and German governments conspired to
trigger a financial crisis in order to oust Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi. Said Five Stars Minister of Infrastructure and
Transports Danilo Toninelli: a “government that wants an
ethical state, an ethical economy, and equality between citizens is
obviously frightening.” Notable are the parties’
slogans: “Thieving Rome” for the League and “F*ck
Off!” for Five Stars.

Like Italy’s coalition, most of the populist governments
are big spenders and comfortable intervening in the economy. Some
are fans of authoritarian democracy; several want better relations
with Russia. Most are comfortable with EU membership but not with
further transfers of authority to Brussels; several are critical of
the Euro. They unite more in what they are against than what they
are for.

There are three major areas of agreement between them. The first
is hostility to the political elites who have long dominated
governments across the continent. This has resulted in the mass
slaughter of traditional center-right and center-left ruling
parties. Voters are punishing politicians who fail to represent
their concerns and finding other candidates who at least claim to
do so.

Second, the so-called European Project is kaput. Eurocrats,
well-represented by the indefatigable Macron, continue to campaign
for a centralized continental super-state. However, there never was
much grassroots support for handing more control over
people’s lives to a supranational organization noted for its
“democratic deficit.” This idea is even less popular
now even among once-pliable member governments.

Finally, public opposition to mass immigration is overwhelming.
The concern isn’t new, but the 2015 human tsunami that hit
Europe convinced many voters that their governments could not be
trusted. Populists have taken the lead in demanding that borders be
shut, with even the governments of Denmark and the Netherlands
trending against accepting foreign migrants. Proposals for the free
movement of people, however attractive in theory, are dead in
Europe.

Creation of a more cooperative and united Europe over the last
six decades was an exceptional good, helping to repair a devastated
continent, generating widespread prosperity, and making another
continental war unthinkable. But the campaign for a United States
of Europe without borders ignored not just history, culture, and
tradition, but human nature. Macron overstates the threat when he
worries about a “civil war” within the EU, but
political hubris across the continent has generated a brutal
populist response, which only continues to grow. That wave now
threatens even the most redoubtable of European leaders:
Germany’s Angela Merkel.